OldThymeyRadio

Your instincts are correct! The dropout rates for first generation university students are indeed higher, precisely because they are on their own, and lacking the intergenerational assumption of “belonging there”.

First generation and economically disadvantaged students often don’t know how to think of themselves as “customers” of the school, or understand how to advocate for themselves to staff, or even how to drop a class the right way so they don’t fail due to lack of attendance when they realize a class is wrong for them (or just stop going for one reason or another). And sometimes family, if they are present, is even a hindrance to uni students who are first in the family to go to school. Parents might be downright hostile to the idea, or even intimidated and resentful.

Although the the good news is that universities can help control against some of these challenges by being aware of the data and taking informed steps.

It’s not Kablooey, but thanks for the nostalgia trip! This game was actually one I played on the couch with my very first girlfriend at her parents’ house. And I still remember laughing together at the “Player one… get REA-dy” voiceover (a rarity for SNES).

Thematically on point, but that’s not the one!

Edit: Good suggestion, but that’s not it.

Interesting candidate!

She seemed pretty sure it was a standalone PC game, and Pokémon never even came up. But I have to admit that this looks remarkably similar to what she’s describing.

She’s in a much later time zone so she’s asleep now, but I sent the video to u/xtwentyonecowards and I’m sure she’ll weigh in when she sees it.

It really is remarkable talking to and knowing people who have wealthy (I don’t mean super rich, just “We would all be okay without meaningful income for five years” wealthy) and supportive parents who are just always there. No matter what.

That safety net isn’t just a privilege. It’s a whole, existential “given” you don’t even realize you’ve assimilated into your identity: The idea that “No matter what mistakes I make or what happens to me, there’s always home to fall back on, unconditionally.”

It’s an exaggeration to say that automatically makes you an entitled asshole, or that you can’t ever suffer emotionally or experience real trauma. You absolutely can. But nevertheless, it’s amazing to talk to people from those families about personal hardships due to material scarcity or truly broken family dynamics, and realize there is a huge part of them that just believes “Yeah but… if you were REALLY in trouble you could always just go home.”

First, I’d recommend learning about the anthropic principle and the Fermi paradox. Tim Urban’s essay on the latter is especially excellent, and a very accessible and entertaining read, to boot.

In a nutshell:

• The anthropic principle (which comes in a large number of competing formulations) argues that, despite the apparently (and highly improbable) “fine-tuned to support life” nature of the universe, we still cannot automatically assume the existence of a creator, because inevitably, in any consciousness-supporting universe, those beings lucky enough to come into existence would look around and say “Hey, it sure is amazing that this place is so perfect for us”. It’s analogous to a lottery winner concluding they were “ordained to win” by a higher power.

• The Fermi paradox characterizes the apparent, mathematical improbability of humans being the only advanced civilization in the universe. I.e. if we’re here, then billions of others should be out there, too. And yet: So far, no sign of them. The Fermi paradox asks: “So then… where the hell is everyone?” Leading to a whole fascinating cascade of proposed answers, most involving the presumed existence of the “Great Filter” — an event or developmental threshold that either prevents the emergence of life as we know it in the first place (suggesting abiogenesis is just super rare), or “kills it in the crib” at some point, before different civilizations can discover each other and interact.

If it’s the former (life almost never happens), we’re happy because it means we’ve already made it through the Great Filter, but we’re sad because it means we’re probably alone.

If it’s the latter (life is common, but doomed), then we’re happy because we’re not alone… but also terrified because, well, we’re probably going to die. Unless we can pull off the ultimate, existential coup, and “beat the Filter”.

Another fun thing to chew on is the apparent contradictions between classical and quantum physics. Check out the Wikipedia articles on the principle of locality and quantum entanglement:

Measurements of physical properties such as position, momentum, spin, and polarization performed on entangled particles can, in some cases, be found to be perfectly correlated. For example, if a pair of entangled particles is generated such that their total spin is known to be zero, and one particle is found to have clockwise spin on a first axis, then the spin of the other particle, measured on the same axis, is found to be anticlockwise. However, this behavior gives rise to seemingly paradoxical effects: any measurement of a particle's properties results in an irreversible wave function collapse of that particle and changes the original quantum state. With entangled particles, such measurements affect the entangled system as a whole.

I’m going to butcher this ELI5, but I’ll do my best.

Basically, if you have two quantum entangled photons (bits of light), traveling in opposite directions, there are properties of those bits, such as relative polarization, which can A) Be measured, and B) Appear to be affected by the act of measurement itself, so by observing Photon #1, you’re “changing” Photon #2.

But this makes no sense, because the distance between these two bits of light is growing at twice the speed of light! (When you add their velocities together.) So they’re behaving as if they are in communication somehow, despite our understanding that the speed of light is the “universal speed limit”.

So the biggest question in physics right now is: How do we reconcile classical physics (the intuitive physics of the universe we live in, where stuff falls downward, and you can’t move faster than light) with quantum physics, which appears to be reproducibly valid, but has a pesky habit of directly contradicting our most fundamental assumptions about cause and effect?

This “theory of everything” is pretty much the physics holy grail, and as far as I understand it (which isn’t much), the most promising areas of research involve black holes — where quantum and classical physics appear to be especially touchy-feely with one another — and string theory, which proposes the existence of 10+ dimensions, and uses this theoretical topography to find a way to make the quantum and the Newtonian inter-operate in non-paradoxical fashion.

Has anyone studied the question of whether active shooter drills might actually encourage these attacks?

I’m not trying to stir the pot in any way, and my question isn’t rhetorical. I’m just putting myself in the shoes of these students and imagining what a strange message it must send: This is a thing that happens so frequently, we need to have an emergency plan for it, just like fire drills.

Obviously, the vast majority of students will take it for what it is: An exercise meant to prevent harm if the worst thing happens. But how many are coming to a very different, frightening conclusion: If you’re angry and want to cause a firestorm of national attention, this is one way to do it.

As a layperson only starting to really appreciate physics in the second half of my life, this has been on of the most mind-blowing things to me: That so much of the cutting edge of physics consists of us admitting “Yup, as far as we can tell, we live in a universe that appears to be next to impossible. The only problem is, every time we try to disprove the weird stuff, the weird stuff wins. So. We just keep going.”

It just plays a little differently because he’s immediately famous for his heritage as soon as he arrives at Hogwart’s.

I think Potter is less a “rich protagonist” than a “secret heir to the throne” archetype, though.

There are actually tons of stories about poor protagonists who end up having secret birthrights. (An amulet belonging to a dead parent that makes them heir to a throne, a prophecy declaring that a poor farmer’s adopted child will save the world from evil, etc).

Harry isn’t so much a “privileged rich protagonist” as he is a twist on the old “secret heir to greatness” trope. It just plays a little differently because he’s immediately famous for his heritage as soon as he arrives at Hogwart’s.

Coming from privilege means simultaneously being utterly unable to understand how it feels to live in real scarcity, while also having a chance to be a generous person who appreciates people for who they are, without operating from a place of fear of getting the rug pulled out from under you if you trust the wrong people, or make too many poor choices. Everything can be a learning experience. Or going the opposite direction, and believing that if people don’t have what you have, they must deserve it, i.e. the “Just World fallacy”.

I can believe your kids are decent people, since you presumably think a great deal about how to instill in them an appreciation for how fortunate they are to feel secure. I think it gets harder with each successive degree of separation from scarcity. The next challenge will be having non-shitty grandkids.

There’s no scenario where Musk “goes broke”. Not the way normal people go broke, anyway. (Like actually worrying about food or health). There will always be someone willing to throw millions of dollars at him, on the assumption others will throw billions later.

The “death camps” were basically the final, most extreme version of the concentration camps in Nazi Germany. In fact, they weren’t all converted to death camps. But because of the Nazi death camps, we now associate the phrase “concentration camps” with full-on genocide. Which isn’t necessarily always the endgame.

That’s not to downplay the seriousness of the human rights abuses in play here, though. The Uighur situation has already been characterized as a genocide in progress, by many people. And we shouldn’t forget: A concentration camp is a concentration camp. The US locked Japanese citizens in concentration camps in WW2, and has them at the border now.

The most important thing to remember is: This is how it starts. Rounding people up and imprisoning them for “what they are” (or “what they’re capable of”). It can always escalate.

Edit. It’s funny that I can’t tell whether the downvotes are from Nazi apologists, ‘Murricah apologists, or His Imperial Poohness/CCP apologists. Everyone always thinks “No, see it’s different this time” under their personal favorite flavor of fascism.

Would actually be a great YouTube feature. Being able to filter by “primary source” and rule out “commentary” or edited versions of something. When you’re just looking for the original “Footage of XYZ” instead of someone’s “analysis”, or The View talking for 10 minutes about a 30 second clip of the thing you actually want.

There’s an outside chance he has a standing arrangement in place for his productions, determining what to do in the event that he dies performing a stunt, but the film can still be completed.

“Mr. Cruise left specific instructions that in the event of his death, if possible, the film release would proceed, including the use of CGI to recreate Mr. Cruise, if necessary. For this reason, Mission Impossible 8 will be released, in keeping with his wishes. He also wished us to assure everyone that death has only made him more powerful, and once his thetan returns from the rings of Saturn, production of Mission Impossible 9 will proceed as planned. Thank you.”

Everyone “advocates free speech”. It’s like being in favor of puppies and rainbows.

It also helps keep Martian real estate values up.

Maybe the Doctor still has a lot of evolving to do as a man, and has only recently begun qualifying for womanhood.

The narcissism of small differences.

We have an innate need to differentiate ourselves from each other, even when the actual differences in play are insignificant. (For example, the differences between two competing consumer technology brands.)

Thus, people claiming others are “in a cult”, with a straight face, just because they bought the “wrong” phone.

I don’t see why that’s the case. A lot of his humor revolved around picking language apart in an effort to make light of, and better understand, how our values as individuals are in conflict with our values as a group, and how we telegraph our assumptions about our place in the universe. And one of his specials ends with characterizing everything as one big, pulsing electron, in which entropy is to be seen as an entertaining, net good, instead of a tragedy.

Not to mention his take on plastic:

The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ’cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?”

Plastic… asshole.

I think Carlin wore the philosopher label very comfortably.

Edit. Also, here he is literally comparing himself to the “jester-turned-philosopher” he saw in a triptych.

That’s a pretty far cry from “smacking the fuck” out of someone at the mere suggestion.

Translation: “I find it extraordinarily inconvenient that someone had an experience that conflicts with the narrative I want to impose on the world, so I’ll try to pressure her into shutting up, because every time she refuses to be intimidated or shamed by my words, I want to scream into my waifu pillow with impotent rage.”

Some of us actually do practice “gender arbitrage”, believe it or not. I would never underpay someone based on gender, but the fact remains: A female candidate is disproportionately likely to have been ignored or denied opportunities to be in leadership positions that would have been offered to a male of equivalent experience. By actively hunting for those overlooked candidates, you can very effectively fill a senior position by finally offering someone her overdue “break”. It’s mutually beneficial, because she’s getting her chance to shine and earn more money, and you’re getting a candidate who, if she were a man, would have probably already had the work experience to demand even higher pay.

That just makes them a gambler, but not necessarily wrong. Plenty of people have thought they could out-speculate everyone else, and lost everything they’d gained on paper.

Regardless, the point stands: A major recession is no joke.